It is very interesting, while on the subject of education, to compare the English people in the time of Elizabeth with their ancestors three hundred years earlier, before the Norman influence had disappeared. The Rev. Dr. Jessopp, an eminent English antiquarian, has recently discovered a great mass of documents relating to Rougham, a small parish in Norfolk, from which its continuous history can be traced for the past six centuries. In an essay entitled "Village Life Six Hundred Years Ago," to which brief allusion has been made in the last chapter, he gives an account of this parish in the days of Edward I. So far as the general mode of life, the dwellings of the people, their occupations, and their morality are concerned, this account might be taken for a description of a rural parish in the time of Elizabeth, as portrayed by the writers of the latter period. In scarcely one particular is an improvement visible, while in some directions there was a great deterioration. Six hundred years ago the farms were all very small, in this parish never exceeding two hundred acres, and were cultivated by a class of yeomen who, although nominally tenants, as every one was under the feudal system, were in fact the substantial owners of the soil. But the most remarkable falling-off was in the matter of education, and the results of the researches of the antiquarian in relation to this subject may astonish those persons who have been accustomed to regard the progress of the English people as continuous. The parish which Dr. Jessopp investigated contained less than three thousand acres, and was purely agricultural. It torian is not so ill-informed as they suppose; and the fact is highly probable." "The majority of the clergy were nearly illiterate.”— "Const. Hist.,” i. 203. CONDITION OF RELIGION 351 had a village church, but no monastery, abbey, or other religious house to attract ecclesiastics. And yet he found, by the records, that during the reign of Edward I. there were at the same time eight, and probably ten or twelve, persons in this little parish who knew how to write well. He ventures the opinion, from his investigations in various quarters, that, in proportion to the inhabitants, the number of persons who could write had not increased in England during the last six centuries, until about forty years ago.* Such being the state of education among the subjects of "Good Queen Bess," what shall we say of religion and morality? If there is no more connection between moral and intellectual development than some persons imagine, we might expect this people to be at least devout and moral. Let us see what were the facts. In the first place, as to religion, looking only at the surface, it seemed to many persons as if there were none in the land. The revival of learning at court was, as Taine "The Coming of the Friars, and other Historical Essays," by the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, D.D. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889). Prof. Thorold Rogers states that there was no improvement in English agriculture from the reign of Edward I. to that of Elizabeth, and that probably less land was under cultivation at the latter date. Time, March, 1890. John Foster, in his work on "Popular Ignorance," makes some very just remarks on the deg radation and illiteracy of the English people at large, among whom flourished the intellectual chiefs who have given a factitious character to the Elizabethan age. He also uses very trenchant language in relation to the governing classes of that country, who, until a very recent date, allowed "an incalculable and everincreasing tribe of human creatures to grow up in a condition to show what a wretched and offensive thing is human nature left to itself." See Bohn's ed., 1856, Preface, and p. 63, etc. has well said, a pure Pagan Renaissance. The authors read were the Greek and Latin classics, or the poets and story-tellers of Italy, who in the main were as irrelig ious as they were immoral. Here and there might be found a noble who had some notions of religion, but, although from the queen down they all talked about it, the earnest believers were rarely found in the upper circles. One of them was the Earl of Essex, whose widow married Leicester. He died, in 1576, like a patriot and a Christian, his last thoughts being turned towards his country and his God. "He prayed much for the noble realm of England," said a bystander, “for which he feared many calamities." Of his countrymen he said: "The Gospel had been preached to them, but they were neither Papists nor Protestants; of no religion, but full of pride and iniquity. There was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity; atheism, atheism; no religion, no religion." * Well might the dying earl take a gloomy view of the religious situation. In many of the dioceses at least a third of the parishes had no clergymen at all.+ Where the livings were filled, the incumbents, in a majority of cases, were nearly illiterate, and often addicted to drunkenness and other low vices. As the patrons, under the remarkable system which still prevails in England, selected the clergymen, and often chose their bakers, butlers, cooks, or stablemen to fill the sacred office, * Froude, xi, 220. + Idem, vii. 477. Hallam's "Const. Hist.," i. 203; Hall, p. 105. As I shall show in a subsequent chapter, this condition of the Church was largely the result of excluding from the pulpits the most learned and diligent of the clergy because of their Puritanism. They were doing work in other quarters. while they took the income, we need not wonder at anything which is related of them.* Above the clergymen stood the bishops, and many of them were mere time-serving politicians, anxious only to lay up a fortune for themselves and their families. This is not remarkable in view of their relations to the new establishment. When Aylmer, for example, preached before Elizabeth and dared to denounce the extravagance of the court in the matter of apparel, his mistress threatened, if he repeated the offence, to send him at once to heaven, but without his head. After such a lesson it is not probable that many persons were offended by hearing criticism of their vices from priest or bishop. Of course all of the Established clergy were not corrupt or sensual. There were always among them men distinguished for their piety and virtue. But these, like the scholars, were so few in number as hardly to produce an impression on the mass of the community, without the aid of some outside influence such as that which had developed England in the past. Considering now the question of morality, we find the picture nearly, if not quite, as dark-becoming darker, too, in some of its features, as time went on-and for the causes we have not far to seek. The spoils of the monasteries amounted, perhaps, to one fifth of the kingdom's wealth. All this colossal plunder had been suddenly thrown over to a horde of courtiers, unrestrained by any * Drake speaks of the tales of their gross debauchery, to say nothing of the charges brought against them of perjury and manslaughter. "Shakespeare and his Times,” p. 44, citing Harrison and the Talbot Papers. + See as to the bishops, Hallam's "Const. Hist.," i. 226; Hall, p. 105; Froude, xii. 21. See also Chapter IX. for a fuller discussion of this subject. religious principle. The demoralization soon worked down to the masses, all forms of industry being disorganized, and society being disturbed to its very foundations. At the same time, the commerce of the world had made great strides, so that the ocean carried on its bosom incalculable treasures. Like their Saxon and Danish ancestors, the English, in the main, despised the men whose labors created this new wealth, but they took their share of it by becoming, what those ancestors had been, a race of corsairs. Secure in their rock-bound island fortress, and protected by the wars which engrossed the whole attention of their neighbors, they plundered friend and foe alike, and heaped up cargoes of costly fabrics, gold, silver, and precious stones, as in a pirates' cave.* Rioting in such plunder by land and sea, we need not marvel at the modes in which they displayed their gains, nor at the immorality which seemed for a time to taint almost every class in the community. Before looking at the evidence of this immorality, let us see what intelligent foreign observers of three centuries ago thought about this and other kindred subjects. Says Hentzner, writing in 1598: "The English are serious, like the Germans, lovers of show, liking to be followed wherever they go by troops of servants, who wear their master's arms in silver, fastened to their left sleeves, and are justly ridiculed for wearing tails hanging down their back. They are good sailors, and better pirates, cunning, treacherous, thievish."+ Meteren, the learned Antwerp historian, who lived many years in London, thus describes some of their traits at about the same period: "As a people, they are stout * In the next chapter I shall have much more to say about these corsairs. + Hentzner's "Travels." |